Cold War Politics and Scooby Doo By James

In my second year of A-level History, my syllabus leads me to the Cold War political debate, with much focus on both American and Soviet foreign policies. In trying to 'research', without actually reading or writing (generally doing anything which would put me to sleep), I thought perhaps I could watch movies, looseley based on the Cold War period (despite my extensive viewing of 10 Things I Hate About You in order to study Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew landing me with a nice grade F) - Thirteen Days with Kevin Costner and Dr Strangelove sprung to mind, but while mindlessly flipping through channels on a dull Wednesday evening, I found the ultimate cliffnote for the state of International Politics - Scooby Doo.

I can only imagine that Scooby Doo was originally meant for teaching young children about politics, you know kind of like how Popeye teaches kids to eat spinach and Captain Planet teaches them to save the environment. The way I see it, each country's politics is personified in a member of the cartoon's cast, simplified, with a (Cold War) slightly revisionist slant (as it was created by American producers and story-writers)

Let's start with what is perhaps the most obvious of the nation-character connections - Fred is the United States. There is no doubt about it, just from sheer appearance we can see that he is everything that 99% of Americans want to look like the blonde hair, the muscular physique, everything! Obviously this is how America would want to see itself, as tall dashing and handsome, so perfect in fact that if Hitler were alive, he and Goebbels would have made Fred the poster-child of all German NAZI promoting, Jewish hating, WASP loving propaganda. I imagine the name Fred stands for Fight Reds, Expand Democracy. First of all, Fred is (quite naturally) the leader, he listens to the opinions of Velma, ultimately he applauds her speculations, but just ends up doing whatever the hell he wants to - what's best for Fred. If Velma says Fred should go away with Daphne, he's there is a second, but if Daphne says she should go with Shaggy, he just goes with Daphne anyway. This is obviously a clear reflection of the USA's foreign policy and it's attitude towards the United Nations (personified by Velma). The USA is forever encouraging and endorsing the United Nations, but as soon as they have a suggestion which does not directly benefit the USA, they just do what they want and completely disregard the UN. As with Fred, the USA always always always does what's in it's (his) best interest. Historical example? World War 1: the whole world is at war and millions are dying whilst the Americans hide behind their isolationist policy. But as soon as there's a threat to their own trade, with the sinking of one of their submarines, the USA jumps into the war with two feet, because it can no longer leech and make money off of those countries being ravaged in the war. Now it's in it's own interest to end this petty war, so it can get back to it's economic growth.

Velma is the United Nations. She's ultimately subservient to Fred. Now I wouldn't go as far as to say that the United Nations is the USA's wipping boy, but I would say it's not far off. As is going on right now, the USA just agrees with the UN when it suits them, but utterly discards it when their perspectives and aims disagree.

Daphne is Britain, she doesn't really give a toss, she just follows Fred.

Scooby Doo is obviously supposed to be the Soviet Union. While every other member of the cast (except Shaggy) is trying to solve the mysteries and catch the ghosts, Scooby is hiding somewhere being scared and usually eating something. Through the entire Russian history, especially during the Stalinist period, Russia has been obsessively paranoid about being attacked. This is perfectly reflected in Scooby's perpetual fear of, well, everything. Secondly, he is always found at the end of the episodes hiding, usually in a barrel or a wheelbarrow. This represents the Russian aim of building up a friendly communist buffer-zone in Eastern Europe, behind which they could hide and not be attacked by Germany again.

Finally, I believe that Scrappy Doo represents the Asian Communist countries - China, North Korea and Japan. Since Scooby and Scrappy are both dogs, this shows the common communist ideology. The difference in the cartoon, is that Scrappy is much more aggressive than Scooby, and this shows that while Russia was constantly paranoid, signing treaties like the Nazi-Soviet pact and the Treaty of Brest Litovsk to avoid war, the other Asian Communist countries were in fact more aggressive. China joined in the Korean War against the USA, and Japan bombed Pearl Harbour.

All in all, I think that Scooby Doo is an excellent way of illustrating the foreign policies of different countries for children, I wholly believe that that was the aim of this series. All I have left to do is discover which country Shaggy is supposed to represent. He's more of a mystery, because he hangs out with Scooby and Scrappy, but he isn't a dog, meaning he can't be communist. Perhaps represents the espionage at the time and he's a capitalist spy...?